Some things just make you shake your head in disgust, wondering how so many people could possibly be so stupid.  Rasmussen reports, “60% of Voters Say Supreme Court should Base Rulings on Constitution.”

During his acceptance speech last night at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, John McCain told the audience, “We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don’t legislate from the bench.” Most American voters (60%) agrees and says the Supreme Court should make decisions based on what is written in the constitution, while 30% say rulings should be guided on the judge’s sense of fairness and justice. The number who agree with McCain is up from 55% in August.

What the other 10% think should be used is a mystery - ouija boards maybe.  Don’t laugh, they couldn’t be worse than something as frightening as the “sense of fairness and justice” of a small group of judges.  If that’s how our law is to be decided, why even bother with a democracy?

From Britain, but the same basic story could just as well be told from America:

The head of the NHS rationing watchdog has said he is ‘genuinely sorry’ for a delay in approving a new treatment for blindness.

But campaigners said Andrew Dillon’s comments would be of little consolation to the thousands of Britons who have lost their sight in the two years it took NICE to make its final decision.

The watchdog has now approved Lucentis, which is used to treat wet age-related macular degeneration, a condition which affects 26,000 new sufferers every year.

NICE’s original recommendation was that patients had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they would be given treatment to save the sight in the other.

The proposal caused a huge public outcry from doctors and campaigners, prompting a U-turn in December last year before further consultation resulted in the final decision today.

NHS thought it was their responsibility to decide what level of risk warranted use of this drug. The public vehemently disagreed with the determination that the drug was only worth taking after eye-sight was lost in one eye.

Why is the individual’s own judgment not sufficient? Let people decide when they want to take a drug, and risk the side-effects, not government. If they want to wait until they are blind in one eye, then they can.  But no one knows better than the individual how to properly way the consequences of their choices.

Proponents of government interventionism always promote these watchdog groups as protecting consumers, but what they really do is needlessly delay the operation of the market.  The real beneficiaries are the drug manufacturers, whose already approved products need not face the level of competition they otherwise would without government meddling.

Freedom is a wonderful thing.  Let it happen.

Hat tip: OpenMarket.org

Regular readers will know I have many issues with Ron Paul. From his quirky and misguided obsession with the gold standard to his head-in-the-sand isolationism (and his tendency toward kook conspiracies), he often rubs me the wrong way.  But on many other issues he is one of only a few voices representing federalism and limited government.  In that vein, this op-ed by Dr. Paul is worth reading, especially considering the type of big-government rhetoric that is about to bombard us from Denver.

On a similar matter to the video I posted yesterday, it seems Britain is seriously considering taking a hint from the Swedish and might actually allow their citizens a bit of educational freedom.

This summer, at least 25,000 children will drop out of English schools without a single qualification to show for their years of compulsory education. Some 240,000 will graduate from primary school unable to read or write properly. By autumn, some 250 schools judged to be failing will welcome an intake of new pupils. Youth unemployment will probably hit an 11-year high. It will, tragically, be just another year in one of the world’s highest-funded education systems.

Two strategies are available to David Cameron in addressing this scandal, should he get to No. 10. He could perform his own surgery on the comprehensive system pretending, as all prime ministers pretend, that he can actually control it. The Local Education Authorities, with whom the power rests, would almost certainly ignore him, as they did Tony Blair. But the second policy would be a new one. He would invite anyone to set up a new state school, run it independently of government, and receive a sum likely to be more than £6,000 a pupil.

He would, in short, seek to bring the Swedish education revolution to Britain. When Mr Cameron first promised to do this at the Tory conference in Blackpool (along with Wisconsin-style welfare reform), it sounded a rather abstract idea, the stuff of think-tank seminars rather than everyday life. Yet in the last five months Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary, has been carefully designing a blueprint which would enable the establishment of a new breed of local independent schools, funded by the state but not run by it. It is potentially a plan of huge significance.

…

Freedom works.  Maybe one day the unions and other entrenched interests can be defeated here in that State’s and we can have some.

Continuing their war against free choice, Democrats are ramping up their crusade to save people from themselves, this time by bringing tobacco under the control of the FDA.

The House voted 326-102 Wednesday to approve legislation granting FDA authority over tobacco products, paving the way for the Senate to possibly consider the bill in the fall.

Lawmakers have tried for more than a decade to place tobacco products under FDA purview in an effort to stem smoking.

The bill has wide bipartisan support, but Republican leaders and the Bush administration oppose it. They assert FDA would not have the resources to take on a new responsibility and argue agency oversight would give the public the wrong impression that tobacco is safe.

The administration threatened to veto the bill Wednesday, arguing the bill would disproportionately tax low-income Americans. The measure would assess user fees from tobacco companies to raise an estimated $5 billion over 10 years to underwrite FDA’s efforts.

The debate turned heated when House Minority Leader Boehner, perhaps the House’s highest profile smoker, took the floor.

“Most of my colleagues know that I smoke,” he said. “I know that smoking is probably not good for my health. Most Americans know cigarettes are probably not good for their health. Do we need the government to tell us? Do we need to spend $5 billion of smokers’ money for the government to tell us?”

Summoning the self-righteous hot air of all the liberal crusaders in this nation’s history, Dingus responded by patting himself on the back for his noble purpose.

“This legislation is on the floor because people are killing themselves by smoking these evil cigarettes,” Dingell said.

“The distinguished gentleman, the minority leader, is going to be amongst the next to die,” said Dingell. Then with a wide smile, he added, “I am trying to save him, as the rest of us are, because he is committing suicide every time he puffs on one of those things.”

What exactly makes Dingus more qualified to evaluate the risk versus reward of Boehner’s smoking than Boehner himself?

Some might be wondering why Phillip Morris broke from the rest of the industry and supported this legislation. The easy answer might be that they saw the writing on the wall and sought to mitigate the extent of the damage. I believe the answer is something else.

These kinds of regulatory interventions in the name of consumer protection are nothing new. What apparently only Phillip Morris realized, however, is that after do-gooders get what they want, they lose interest. The regulatory bodies they created are then free to be co-opted by industry, where they are then used to prevent competition.

When the uproar began against the railroad industry, far thinking railroaders realized they could use the federal intervention to their advantage. After the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission they were able to do just that. Because no one understood the railroad industry more than railroaders, the more regulatory power was granted to the ICC over railroads the more their own bureaucrats were drawn from the industry itself. By the time trucking became a major threat to the railroad industry, ICC was perfectly placed to defend the railroads from competition. The Motor Carrier Act of 1935 gave the ICC authority to regulate truckers (to protect the railroads), which they used to severely limit the ability of new truckers to enter the industry.

The story of the ICC is hardly unique. Indeed, it represents the natural history of government intervention, as described by Milton Friedman:

A real of fancied evil leads to demands to do something about it. A political coalition forms consisting of sincere, high-minded reformers and equally sincere interested parties. The incompatible objectives of the members of the coalition (e.g., low prices to consumers and high prices to producers) are glossed over by fine rhetoric about “the public interest,” “fair competition,” and the like. The coalition succeeds in getting Congress (or a state legislature) to pass a law. The preamble to the law pays lip service to th rhetoric and the body of the law grants power to government officials to “do something.” The high-minded reformers experience a glow of triumph and turn their attention to new causes. The interested parties go to work to make sure that the power is used for their benefit. They generally succeed.

The history of the FDA itself meets this pattern. Reformers were concerned about the conditions at meat-packing plants. Special interests quickly hoped on board. Meat-packers were more than happy to have government certify the cleanliness of their product, and have taxpayers pay for the process.

Today’s FDA does far more harm than good. It prevents the creation and distribution of valuable new drugs, benefiting manufacturers who face limited competition once they’ve established themselves. Phillip Morris is apparently more forward-thinking than other tobacco companies and has learned from this history. They realize government can grant them far more power than the market ever would allow, and they know that high-minded reformers are the vehicle through which they can successfully grab this power.

Senators Wyden and Snowe are proposing a 5-year ban on state increases on cell phone taxes.

According to a copy of the bill seen by Ars Technica, “No State or local jurisdiction shall impose a new discriminatory tax on or with respect to mobile services, mobile service providers, or mobile service property, during the 5-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.” Local tax raises are fine, but they cannot single out wireless service.

I applaud the belief that such taxes should be kept to a minimum.  I cannot, however, support the federal government usurping the right of the states to make such decisions simply because I do not like the decisions they are making.  It is up to voters to hold their state reps accountable.  That is the proper functioning of our federalist system; this bill is, therefore, misguided.

If there’s any doubt left as to why the republican party has suffered the collapse that it has, let it go. The reason is obvious: republicans have turned into democrats - big government, big spending, control your life democrats.

Here’s a prime example:

An influential Republican senator suggested Thursday that Congress might want to consider reimposing a national speed limit to save gasoline and possibly ease fuel prices.

Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to look into what speed limit would provide optimum gasoline efficiency given current technology. He said he wants to know if the administration might support efforts in Congress to require a lower speed limit.

Congress in 1974 set a national 55 mph speed limit because of energy shortages caused by the Arab oil embargo. The speed limit was repealed in 1995 when crude oil dipped to $17 a barrel and gasoline cost $1.10 a gallon.

As motorists headed on trips for this Fourth of July weekend, gasoline averaged $4.10 a gallon nationwide, with oil hovering around $145 a barrel.

Warner cited studies that showed the 55 mph speed limit saved 167,000 barrels of oil a day, or 2 percent of the country’s highway fuel consumption, while avoiding up to 4,000 traffic deaths a year.

There is no case for government intervention here. The benefits of driving 55 are had by those who are doing the driving, therefor they have every incentive to do so already. They can balance the considerations on their own (using less gas versus more time spent driving) and decide which matters more to them.

If people actually care about using less gas and saving money, then they will drive at about such a speed without government mandate. If they don’t care, then there’s no justification for a politician, elected to represent the people, to institute something they don’t want. In either case, government should butt out. A republican should know better.

It is accepted conventional wisdom that the American polity is contentiously divided along partisan lines in a way unlike ever before. While the veracity of this statement is historically debatable, it cannot be doubted that Americans are strongly entrenched along partisan lines. Barack Obama has sold himself as the candidate best suited to bridge this divide.

Embedded in Obama’s soaring rhetoric is a bold collectivist agenda. He sees a future where we, through government action, “provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless.” He mocks those who want to reduce the size and scope of government - by allowing people to choose their own health care, their own schools and their own futures - as supporting “social Darwinism.” Obama proposes to implement these government programs in the name of social justice, but an understanding of democracy demonstrates that what we’ll actually see is a further erosion of social cohesion. He’d replace the Ownership Society with a Nanny Society.

Democracy is more inherently responsive to the preferences of citizens than any other form of government. This should not mask the fact that government, even when democratic, cannot come close to matching the ability of free markets to respond to the wide variety of preferences of ordinary people. Conversely, government action forces individuals into choices they do not want. Milton Friedman observed that, “the characteristic feature of action through explicitly political channels is that it tends to require or to enforce substantial conformity.”

Imagine two neighboring families of different backgrounds looking to school their children. Each family wants to ensure their children’s education does not conflict with their cultural and religious traditions. In a free market system these families can both find adequate education by placing their children in schools that meet their own standards. In the present system, however, government education has forced conformity, meaning that both of these families preferences cannot be simultaneously satisfied. The two families must place their children in the same school due to their geographic proximity, despite their expressed differences. If they wish to influence their children’s education, they must then do so through political channels. Thus, when these two families both lobby the local school board for conflicting educational goals they become, thanks to government, not just neighbors but political opponents.

Over the decades, as government has vastly expanded the scope of its involvement in private affairs, citizens have been forced into an ever growing number of these confrontational situations. With so much personally at state in every governmental decisions, it is little wonder that many have taken an adversarial view of politics. Further expansion of government is clearly not the answer. If we want to restore social cohesion we must begin extracting government from the decisions that matter most to us. Barack Obama’s optimistic rhetoric, no matter how expertly delivered, cannot heal America so long as he is advocating for more of the collectivist action which has brought us here in the first place.

Low-cost health coverage will now be “allowed” for Floridians! One can’t help but ask: who was disallowing it in the first place? Oh, that’s right, government was.

With considerable fanfare, Gov. Charlie Crist traveled the length of his state on Wednesday to sign a bill aimed at providing low-cost health coverage to the uninsured by allowing the sale of stripped-down insurance policies.

…His initiative, which both houses of the Republican-controlled Legislature approved unanimously, enables insurers to create bare-bones policies that the governor hopes will sell for no more than $150 a month. That is about 60 percent less than the average cost of a policy for a single person in Florida, according to state insurance regulators.

The policies would be available to any Floridian 19 to 64 who has been uninsured for at least six months and who is not eligible for public insurance. In a critical provision, insurers would be prohibited from rejecting applicants based on age or health status.

To make the policies affordable, Florida will allow insurers to offer policies that do not include many of the 52 services that standard policies must currently cover, like acupuncture and podiatry. The state added a mandate on Tuesday, when Mr. Crist signed a bill requiring coverage for treating autism.

The low-cost plans have to include preventive services, office visits, screenings, surgery, prescription drugs, durable medical equipment and diabetes supplies.

It’s amazing that no where in this coverage is the author able to articulate the most obvious point: if undoing government restrictions lowers cost, then government is at least partly to blame for high costs. It is also, therefore, responsible for the numbers of people without insurance. Anytime you have these restrictive standards which inflate production costs, you necessarily freeze people out of the market by preventing them from being serviced at a price they can afford.

Mr. Crist acknowledged that the low-cost plans would not provide “Cadillac coverage.” But he said he was optimistic that uninsured Floridians would buy the plans after they are able to analyze their costs and benefits, starting early next year.

Milton Friedman addressed the problem of “Cadillac standards” in Capitalism and Freedom:

At a meeting of lawyers at which problems of admission were being discussed, a colleague of mine, arguing against restrictive admission standards, used an analogy from the automobile industry. Would it not, he said, be absurd if the automobile industry were to argue that no one should drive a low quality car and therefore that no automobile manufacturer should be permitted to produce a car that did not come up to the Cadillac standard. One member of the audience rose and approved the analogy, saying that, of course, the country cannot afford any thing but Cadillac lawyers! This tends to be the professional attitude. The members look solely at technical standards of performance, and argue in effect that we must have only first-rate physicians even if this means that some people get no medical service - though of course they never put it that way. Nonetheless, the view that people should get only the “optimum” medical service always lead to a restrictive policy, a policy that keeps down the number of physicians.

While Friedman was addressing medical care itself, the analogy works equally well for insurance coverage. Government mandates enforcing “Cadillac coverage” have kept down the number of people who can afford coverage. In other words, the problem of high numbers of uninsured is government created. If you want to reduce the number of people without medical insurance, allow them to buy policies that are customized to their needs, not ones loaded with unnecessary mandates created by government nannies.

The talking heads have been abuzz, salivating at the prospect of a decapitated republican party, with many already writing up the eulogies. Reports of the party’s demise are, of course, premature. While the landscape this election is unquestionably bad, the party can regain its strength in the long run if it returns to a proper understanding of its role in the American political landscape.

The party must quit trying to play the democrats’ game.

Republicans have fared so poorly in recent years primarily because the party has abandoned the ideological framework which successfully guided the party into power and replaced it with the democrats issue-oriented, say-whatever-it-takes-to-achieve-power approach. Lacking any significant overarching ideology, the democratic party jumps from issue to issue, adopting whatever position is most popular by pandering to a public that may or may not be capable of understanding the consequences of its positions. The Republican party cannot win by adopting this appeal-to-popular-feelings approach. It lacks the ability to out pander the democrats, in large part because the media are less inclined to call democrats out on the inconsistent positions which will necessarily arise when candidates act on whim rather than coherent ideology.

Unable to actually win many new voters with this approach, Republicans are still perfectly capable of losing them. No longer given the option of a “thinking man’s party,” ideological voters who once saw a sharp contrast between parties now find little reason to consistently choose republicans over democrats.

The way out of the wilderness is fairly straightforward. The party must quit trying to play the democrats’ game. Don’t berate oil companies just because democrats are doing it; point out the numerous ways in which government has forced high gas prices upon us. Don’t whine about fictional “price-gouging”; defend the free market system and acknowledge the important role that price fluctuations play in simultaneously signaling a need for, and encouraging the movement of, additional resources. Don’t jump on board the “climate change” bandwagon; point out the very real dangers in ceding control of so many realms of private society out of fear for an unproven environmental threat. The republican party needs to justify its existence in a political landscape in which the role of panderer is already taken. To do so it must not only pay lip service to the free market, classical liberal ideology, it must live it.